by David Gunter
He paused to gather his thoughts and figure out how to explain the next part. At least his counter-question had bought him a moment from his interrogation.
David continued to tell Jammie all the things the man in the suit had said, and sometimes Jammie paused before launching into a litany of questions, and sometimes she just went on and on in the now very common Jammie-is-the-boss kind of way.
After a long while, David couldn’t tell; he sat on the couch staring at the old cherry wood wall clock in the living room and, only occasionally, stealing glances at the phone that was back on the wall mount. He was working out everything that had been said and rethinking through the things he could have said better. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that there were things to do in order to be ready for the changes coming up in the coming weeks, but he was also just as happy pretending that time didn’t exist and that everything would simply fall into place.
CHAPTER III
Going Under
The days between the talk with the kids and the day of the operation were filled with the mundane and common things one might expect. The kid’s clothes and other things had been packed and moved to Aunt Jammie’s by the last week, and David was living somewhere between homes. He would pick up the kids from Jammie’s house and then, after dropping them off, would spend most of the evening with them at her house. David had taken all the kid’s clothes and toys and moved them to Aunt Jammie’s, and then movers had moved almost everything else to storage. A few items of clothing remained hung in the master closet, and he’d set up an air mattress, so he continued to shower and dress at the house before driving to the other house to pick up the kids for school.
After dropping off the kids at school, he would drive back to Aunt Jammies so she could spend most of the day pointing out all the things he should’ve been doing for the kids. His only respite happened when Uncle Mark came home after work. Somehow Mark gave him the excuse he needed to step outside the house, though he hadn’t quite figured out which social cues or superpowers he was using to accomplish it. David was not entirely sure, but it seemed that the magic happened when Mark walked into the kitchen and took out a couple of cold drinks from the fridge. The event might have also suggested that there was some predetermined arrangement between Mark and Jammie that could have been established long before and perhaps in the earlier years of their marriage.
Whatever the case, once outside, David felt that a weight had been lifted. They would sit outside watching the cars go by or by the backyard pool, enjoying the breeze in silence. Someday and in some fashion, David decided he would have to thank Mark for these precious moments of peace. In all the years he’d known Mark, he hadn’t truly appreciated his brother-in-law and the camaraderie that had simply been lying there, undiscovered or untapped.
There had been times through the years when they had gathered the families together for a camping trip or summer program. Those days, however, had always been busy for the family and it wasn’t until now, after all those years, that they finally had a chance to just hang out like men were supposed to do.
Though the shadow of the upcoming surgery was close, David knew that things were in good hands, and sitting outside on a couple of lawn chairs enjoying the silence of outside reassured him that in spite of the criticism he was receiving during the day, he and the kids were loved and would always be welcome at Aunt Jammies. After all, no words can convey the friendship between men better than a cold drink and a long, drawn-out silence.
To say that they had never talked about anything isn’t entirely fair, though. One time they had spent almost ten minutes talking about smelting metals and their love for welding and smithing. It was an odd hobby the two men had in common but one, nonetheless, that they’d shared in their youths. Of course, talking about smithing isn’t the same as actually smithing, and their silence said this too. Inarguably the twists and turns of life had taken things from both men, and they both recognized this loss as natural and unavoidable. This silence spoke about this and other things, deeper wisdom that only men can know.
❧
The day finally came for the surgery, and everybody went with David to the hospital. They met the surgeon, and after a long, drawn-out prayer from Jammie and a big group hug, David was rolled away on a hospital bed feeling a bit of hope and a lot of trepidation. Not long after, he was lying on a table completely covered in a sterile blue-colored cloth and watching a drip empty into his veins while a hazy dream and an overwhelming feeling of goodness slowly clouded his mind. He struggled with his eyes as they closed, and he had one more thought of Hellen. ‘I’ll find you, babe’ was his final thought before the darkness.
The next thing he knew, stars, twinkling lights, and then the full expanse of space filled his vision. He stared at all the details and could feel a bitter cold touch his body, but he ignored it as he felt strength enter his being, and he could feel deep, restful breaths filling his lungs. He looked at his new body and knew he was more alive than he’d ever been.
He was floating in space and felt that everything would be all right.
“Is this place the final stop?” he wondered aloud. But as he looked at the stars, one of them started to blink faster and brighter than all the others, and he felt he was being pulled towards it, and with every blink, he moved faster towards this star.
A voice whispered to him as he flew towards it. “David, let yourself be touched by the celestial bodies. Then yours will be one of imagination and invention. Take this path to find the greatest joy in your new world. When you look up to the great expanse, you will see what others do not. You will see great power and the path to take. For you, the stars will be a marker and a sign. All that you imagine and create will be touched by the might of the stars. I’ll see you soon…. my love”.
“Hellen?” David said aloud.
There wasn’t a response, and he wondered if he had heard it or if this whole thing was some kind of dream brought on by the drugs.
The light of the approaching star and the sight of worlds orbiting this star almost made David doubt he’d heard the words, but they lingered as his full consciousness returned. Then he was surrounded by a strange school of creatures swimming in the expanse of space. They went around and through him. Though still unsure of the origin of the voice he’d heard, he heeded the voice and allowed their smooth surfaces to slide along his skin. He felt strange, hot, and cold sensations coursing throughout his body as he fell through them to the world below. The next thing he knew, he found himself lying on a rock-covered floor in a cold dark place.
“My love?” he whispered. The voice had been a whisper, but he’d surely heard it.
“Is that the sound of her voice? Why can’t I remember it? Damn it. It hurt that he couldn’t be sure it was her voice he’d heard.
In the time since she’d passed away, he’d often thought of the sound of her voice, but in the more recent months, it had become harder to do so. He repeated the sound of the whisper and searched for a memory, any memory that would answer the question. But he searched in vain as the memories just weren’t coming. The voice had sounded foreign and yet familiar, and he hadn’t expected to find her so quickly. There could have been another explanation for the sense of familiarity, he told himself.
He slowly moved his body to a sitting position and took stock of his surroundings. He was in a cave, he knew. He could feel a cool wind coming from the entrance to the cave and the light was dim enough to assume that it was nighttime. He got up and decided the cave wasn’t pleasant enough to remain where he was, and outside might be more inviting.
As he stumbled over cold stones, headed towards the entrance, he realized as well that he was wearing a very thin and loose-fitting gown. It looked almost the same as the one he had worn before the operation, but he was grateful at least that this one didn’t let cold air onto his backside like the one in the real world had. He was more grateful for that when
he felt a snaking cold coming from the back of the cave. Whatever was behind him was certainly worse than what awaited him outside the cave, he reasoned.
Walking to the entrance, he stopped and stared out into the world outside the cave. The scene was bathed in the beautiful colors of the starlight above. The amount of color reflecting from the sky above gave the world a truly fantastical appearance, which reminded him of his young daughter’s drawings. It surprised him, but at the same time, it confirmed, at least to him, that Hellen had been involved in this feature as she would have been inspired by London’s doodles. He found this encouraging.
“I guess I’m not on earth anymore. Or at least my consciousness isn’t. I wonder what they call this place.” David said this to the night as if speaking to some invisible person.
He recalled that Carl Mathews the 3rd when talking about this place, had mentioned the name, Atsia Major. It was, according to Carl, a place of great adventure. ‘An Adventurer’? Was that supposed to be him now? Someone who would travel far and wide in search of adventure? He highly doubted that. He had never been much for the unknown or discovering new places.
No! David wasn’t interested in all that. Of course, a part of him did feel a little different, though, and as he searched for the source of the feeling, he found that he was feeling a small and almost imperceptible itch in his head that he couldn’t seem to ignore completely. He thought for a moment and then accepted that it had to be an effect from the surgery in the real world. ‘Maybe that’s how people feel after brain surgery’, he thought.
‘Is the surgery over?’, He wondered. It felt like he had simply gone to sleep and appeared in this place. If so, it had certainly been a very smooth transition. He wondered if his children had had a good transition too.
He started thinking about the kids and seeing them again, but before these thoughts fully formed, a slow blinking light in the distance caught his attention. Then a second blinking light caught his attention to the far left. The first light to the right had been a light blue, and the new light to the left was a red-tinged light.
The two lights seemed to be blinking as if communicating to each other, and he reasoned that these two lights were coming from two towers separated by hundreds of miles apart. Taking a quick look around, he noticed that a winding path went down from the cave to the right. He was about to start walking down the path when he looked up again and, seeing the light show in the sky, halted to look once more.
“There sure are a lot of stars out at night in this world,” he said to the night. Briefly, he wondered if in this world it was nighttime all the time. He put that notion away as being unlikely since the forests he spotted down below, from the small mountain he was on, would’ve needed sunlight to grow, he reasoned.
Looking at the path before him, he found that the night sky seemed to bring as much light to the path as any flashlight would have and perhaps a little more light than that. As a side thought, he also realized that if he ever wanted to sleep in this place, he would have to find a really dark and perhaps windowless room. But that would be something that future David would have to figure out.
Then he took the first step in the starlight-covered ground and paused again. He heard something odd. It sounded like a low hum. He reached for his ears to see if gently tugging on them would cause the sound to stop, but this did not help.
He took a step back, and he both felt and heard the hum change. He looked down at his feet and noticed that where his foot had been, the color of the light was a different hue than where he now stood. Something in David stirred and a memory of an earlier time in his life came to him.
He saw himself sitting at the piano in another version of himself. In that version, he was young and more carefree with dreams of art and music. The last year certainly had taken him down a worse path, he thought.
David put his foot down, and instantly the colors on the floor meant something to him. He both saw colors and heard notes that pulled him into a different state of mind. The path before him was some kind of musical instrument, he reasoned. He allowed his feet to play with the colors a bit and realized that each color represented a different musical note. A fun melody from the past came to mind, and he began to step, skip, and leap as the musical colors presented themselves on the path. It didn’t take long before a form of leaping and running dance formed from his efforts, and with a singular focus, he lost the cares and concerns of the past with the musical piece that now unfolded under his feet.
❧
As David jumped on stones, colored by the stars above, eyes filled with wonder watched from a place far above the stars. They were the eyes of Hellen. She watched her lovely David playing with the starlight and perform, as she saw it, for her eyes alone. He skipped and leaped from stone to stone to create the most beautiful music for her.
A long time ago, before kids, before careers, she had fallen in love with her David and with his love of music and song. She had watched him play for her and had felt the love with which he expressed every note to her. This was David as he had once been. She knew that he had suffered much from missing her and knew she couldn’t stay far above watching him from a distance.
She just needed one thing, though. She needed him to go back to the land of the real to live out his life and watch their children grow up to be adults and live their lives and have children of their own. David couldn’t stay here indefinitely. Of this, she had to be certain.
The only way to be sure he didn’t stay was to ensure that he never knew she was with him. Then she remembered the tiny clue of her current existence that she had left for him a few years before. Would he look for her? A part of her desired him to try. But she cast the thought away. It was selfish, and they had their children to think of first. She regretted then the clue she’d left for him and hoped he didn’t remember it.
Then she looked at the man below, dancing down the path. She couldn’t stay completely away, could she? Then the thought occurred to her. This world wasn’t just a world without aim. It was presented to each person as a game where risks were met with rewards. Perhaps she could present herself to him as a reward in some way and enter his life without him knowing it. The thoughts formed and the possibilities abounded, and a plan came fully into view. Hellen took aim and let her love fire true. David would catch his prize, and then she would use that presence in his life to steer him back home and out of this place.
CHAPTER IV
Agents of The Third
Carl Mathews the 3rd sat in a room made of fine leather and expensive wooden furniture. The lamp in his upstairs office was the only thing that gave away the stack of documents waiting for his review. He would finish these documents before turning in for the night, he knew. Yet, it was hard to find the strength to go on sometimes.
On low volume, he played “Vida” by Julio Iglesias and let the music and words sung in a language he couldn’t understand, nor wanted to, soothe him. Here, in a private place of his own, he allowed the uncertainties of his life to exist and expire, only in this place.
Why had he gone along with all this plotting and secrecy? His father and the legacy that had been his inheritance demanded it; that’s why he told himself. The legacy of The Carls was all that he had.
He stared up at the ceiling where a mural depicting winged angels surrounding and pointing fingers, accusingly, at a lone man with horns and a tail who was kneeling on the earth. The horned man held up a pile of dirt where a flowering plant grew from the dirt with a singular white flower. The earth around the man was scorched and dry, and the angels hovered or flew around him, not daring to touch the earth the horned man knelt on. Carl the 3rd was lost in his thoughts and in this reverie.
Carl Mathews the 1st had been a lawyer, an entrepreneur, and ultimately a man of vision. He had planned for a long game and one that meant the long-term success of the Mathews in this country. What it meant for the Carls, however, was a life unwavering in
dedication to a purposeful set of key ideas.
The first of these ideals was a dedication to dominance. Dominance in mental strength, intelligence, power, and resolve. At any time and place, dominance was to be established without an equal. In a board room meeting, at a game of golf, at a family reunion, or even at a street light waiting for the light to turn green. Dominance came first.
The second of these ideals was a dedication to retribution. No stranger, colleague, subordinate, boss, friend, or family member was allowed to escape retribution if dominance was ever questioned or appear to be questioned. After all, ‘appearance’ was the only real proof of existence.
The third of these ideals was the acquisition of debtors and the collection of payment with interest for even the smallest favors. Retribution should always be nearby if payment was late. Retribution should always create more indebted and award higher interest.
These first three ideas built the Mathews empire. It built a network of spies, confidants, movers, pushers, soldiers, and players. All these pawns in the grand game formed the empire. Because of these, their wealth was immense, and the legacy of the Mathews would be remembered and feared.
When Carl the 3rd had accepted the role of CEO for Neural Pathways and Beyond, almost everything had gone to plan. He had established his dominance in every department except for one—the department for research in science and technology. Not recognizing the role this department played in the success and longevity of the company had been his first mistake but the larger mistake had been not realizing how the department’s vice president dominated all the others.
The director and most senior member, Ms. Hellen Gosling, had posed quite the challenge. During meetings, she would talk over him constantly, correct his statements, and did all but ask him to shut up or get out. Since that didn’t have the effect on him that she desired, she started calling meetings with the board without him in them. When he called her to his office, she would in-tern call him to hers and reminded him that she owned more shares in the company than he did.
